


you walk like you're a god (can't believe i made you weak)

by comehereoften



Series: the undone and the divine [1]
Category: Jane the Virgin (TV)
Genre: F/F, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-06
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2019-01-30 11:28:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12652653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/comehereoften/pseuds/comehereoften
Summary: What happens when a mortal brings a god to their knees.





	you walk like you're a god (can't believe i made you weak)

**Author's Note:**

> The night Roisa met but from Rose's PoV. With a few artistic liberties re: the rooftop pool bc canon setting doesn't allow me to wax enough poetic lyrical. I decided to throw this and the piece I already posted and another I'm writing into a series so apologies for the lack of chronology. Once again dedicated to [shatterthelight](http://archiveofourown.org/users/shatterthelight) who I couldn't get through this or any of the hellspiral without.

Rose has never been impulsive about killing.

Death requires planning, premeditation, razor sharp precision. But the car ride is well into its second half of the hour, and with traffic failing to wane Rose is given plenty of time to contemplate just how difficult it would be to strangle her driver.

She's never had time for small talk. And there is no exaggeration in just how murderous her mood is becoming.

The driver taps his fingers against the immobile wheel, hums with a painful lack of tune.

"Going somewhere fancy?" He glances at her in the rearview mirror.

Rose grits her teeth, pours as much air into her tone as she can. "You don't know the area?"

"Sure, but you only gave me the street name."

Rose tries not to lose a chip off a molar. "Then I suppose that'll have to be enough."

The driver huffs, goes back to humming. Rose tries to tease her train of thought back from more morbid things into the pre-plotted possibilities the night could hold. She's parsed them all, would never dare strike out without a target, has yet to select which path to follow. Although she'll be going nowhere if the road doesn't start to decongest, and grapples with how to handle that eventuality as well.

Rose sighs, picks at the hem of her dress with a perfectly manicured nail, stares out of tinted glass into the beyond. Stares at the space behind the streetlights and closes her fist around her craving to conquer; hopes that when she opens it she will hold the world in her hand, feel it flicker and flex between her fingers.

But tonight is less about dominion, more driven by desire. Some might call it her last night of freedom, she sees it as the lost hours between laying one body to rest and pouring herself into another. The perfect time to feast on flesh and all their pleasures. She can't help but smirk.

_A last supper._

The blackened windows bolster her belief that even between bodies she is bulletproof; she will lay down as one woman, rise as another, and make herself believe she's not lost anything in the process. And if the traffic ever starts to move she might find someone to pull down with her, lie beside her unaware of the metamorphosis from one mask to the next.

Surrounding headlights start to blur and she realises they've finally started to move. They draw closer to the city and the pollution progressively blots out more and more stars, but she doesn't need them to know this night is still young, and though this body may be old she cannot rise from the ash before throwing herself to the flame.

 

**_..._ **

 

Rose slips through the door of the bar and into limbo. The streets, the cars, the city lights, the whole world beyond seals itself off behind the heavy glass; smooth music and the hum of voices float through the doorway in front of her that's draped in heavy velvet.

She collects herself in the muffled void between worlds, gathers her arsenal. She breathes. Not deep, vitalising. Imbibes herself with her own power and projects it through every pore. Loads the chamber, flips off the safety, and she is ready to fire. Ready to steal the minds and breath of everyone in the next room, ready to bring them to their knees. Her lips curl, and her feet carry her through the veil.

Rose crosses the threshold, and this realm like every other is hers for the taking. She feels it bend and break and bow down before her, feels the stars tremble beneath the soles of her feet. She feels the cities and islands of bodies crumble in her wake, and every soul pledges allegiance with a look.

She doesn't see people, she sees potential, purpose. Catches every face in her crosshairs, and her eyes fall on one woman at the bar, so entranced she could be staring at a god. She doesn't know Rose is a siren, a sniper, one who beguiles only to devour. Rose has already taken aim, and she goes in for the kill with the thrill of thinking this woman is already lost to her song; little does she know she's opening the window and inviting the storm inside, and as spellbound as the woman seems for once someone is immune to her magic.

Rose circles her prey, slides into the next seat, and starts her age old appraisal of weak spots.

"Hi." She pauses, revels in the woman's eyes tracing over her body in silent worship, smiles. "Can I buy you a drink?" It always does to appear giving.

The woman lets her eyes fall shut, smiles with an amusement Rose can't place before raising her glass and staring her right in the eye. "Thirty four days sober."

A lightning flash rips across the starless sky of Rose's world, illuminates the cracks in the roads she's laid forth with her own bloody hands and shakes her foundations. She doesn't let it show.

She spends her life scouting out flaws, failings, points of entry. Explores them and exploits them for a living. And yet here is a woman willingly offering up her weaknesses on a plate, laying her palm flat and exposing every lifeline and offering to bleed, before even knowing her name. She's holding her story out between bruised knuckles but her fist isn't clenched and for once the option to run or stay isn't being ratified by Rose, but flaunted before her.

Rose doesn't let herself waver, not physically, but somehow the gladly given, prompt proffering of imperfection inspires something Rose didn't know she has within her; for the first time in years she reciprocates with a little honesty of her own.

"Gotcha." The acceptance is easy, unfamiliar in being so. "I'm just getting out of the drug world myself." She laces the truth with a sigh to relieve some of the pressure, airs it out in an attempt to lighten the weight.

Their stares lock again, the other woman looks like she's searching her but Rose is confident there's nothing to find. The bartender wanders over and Rose doesn't deign to offer him a glance, fixes her gaze on the woman's quiet scrutiny.

"Bourbon." She says simply. "Top shelf."

The bartender turns away without once being afforded a look, the woman turns to her own drink, Rose thinks she's won.

Rose still doesn't look away as the crystal is set down beside her and the spirits crash liberally into the bottom of the glass. She celebrates her victory with a sip of amber, enjoys its rich burn on her tongue.

The woman drags the tip of her finger through the film of condensation on her glass, brings the frosted raindrop to her mouth and melts it between her lips, before rubbing her index against her thumb and making inquisitive eye contact once more.

"I'm Luisa." She states, as if she isn't expecting anything back.

Rose swallows some more bourbon and repays her anyway. "Rose."

Luisa's eyes glimmer as she smiles, juxtapose with the bluntness of her follow up. "Is that your real name?"

Rose hasn't felt fear in a very long time, by choice and careful conditioning, and yet the question penetrates the very edge of her stronghold, starts to whisper. Wonders if this woman can _see_ her. See beyond her skin.

_She can't know._

After all, there's nothing there to see. The only thing that lies behind her facade is its blueprints, her objectives, she's more scheme than skeleton.

Before she can reply Luisa casts a fleeting glance around the rest of the bar, "A lot of people come here to be themselves..." She muses. "Some do that by being someone else." She parses the scope of womanhood the room holds. "So," she lands back at Rose. "Who are you?"

Rose feels her world start to shake and amidst attraction, amidst connection, there is anger. Silently clawing the underside of her skin. She doesn't allow it take hold, refuses to let it even scratch. She fuels herself with it, refutes the possibility that Luisa can't be brought to heel and saturates her tone with seduction, disguises it as surrender.

"Who do you want me to be?"

Luisa only shrugs, sips at her drink that seems to consist mostly of ice.

"Rose seems interesting," Luisa raises her eyes from the contents of her glass and fixes Rose with a knowing look and roguish smile. "If she's real."

Rose's earth begins to quake. She's a world-builder, sun-eater, diviner of her own stars, pulling all the strings of so called destiny. Reality is something she creates, sculpts to her own design, she paves her own streets, paints her own skies; dirties her hands with blood if she must just to will her actuality into being. She's beaten real, crushed it in her fist. Where that leaves her in relation to it is something she doesn't dare dwell on.

It's easy not to, given the raging conflict Luisa has unknowingly stirred up inside her. Rose doesn't run she rules, and she has no intention of trying to flee but she's having to fight for what's only ever been handed to her. Fight for control, for power. Over another, over herself. She does not relish the challenge. It's aggravating but she can't let that overpower her either or she might as well have already lost.

And still she wants to know this woman, wants to fall into the spaces where her mind meets her body. Wants to kiss more than kill, wants to crawl inside her bones and bathe in the blood she can hear hammering only inches across from her, without spilling a single drop.

Something in the air has changed, shifted. A tropical storm, all warm winds shaking her kingdom to its core and refusing to die down. Rose shreds the humanity of everyone that crosses her path but somehow Luisa has walked right through the walls of her fortress, and all her power seems to stem from being so very, very human. She can't be extricated from it however Rose tries. It's infuriating. Enrapturing. She wants to both banish this woman who's found her way into her, and let her lead her into all the places she's never journeyed.

Against all better judgement, Rose can't help but reach for her hand, on every plane of her existence. Dance her fingertips across the warmth of Luisa's knuckles and follow her into her own dark. Despite it all, she starts to draw up some of her own directions, chart her territory before Luisa can. She attempts to steer the conversation back to her intruder.

"Do you miss it?" She asks, imparting pressure into her voice as soft as where she's watching herself trace indiscernible runes on the back of Luisa's hand.

"What?" Luisa's confusion is diluted with the distraction of Rose's touch.

Rose looks up as Luisa does the same, takes another generous drag of bourbon. Her eyes smoulder over the rim of the glass, and she savours the smugness induced by how hypnotised Luisa is in the way the tip of her tongue runs along her upper lip, snagging errant droplets of liquor.

"Liquid fun."

Her smirk doesn't falter until Luisa's trance breaks, makes way for melancholy.

"For me it's never about fun. Besides..." Her tone segues into something more playful than poignant, and she flips the hand lying beneath Rose's, pulls her fingers to her palm. "There's more than one way to enjoy yourself."

Rose's breath stumbles in her throat. She hates it. Hates it because the only one stealing gasps should be her. Hates it because the last thing she should be worrying about relying on is her own lungs. Hates it because she loves it.

She shakes out the exhale and continues with her enquiry.

"Whatever have you been up to this past month?" She half-forces a smile that's downright devilish.

Luisa looks her dead in the eye, regards everything she finds there.

"I've been away." Luisa replies, careful, cryptic.

Rose stares back, waits.

"Hopefully this time I'll never have to go back." Luisa finishes.

Rose clicks. But there must be something wrong with her brain, instead of twisting all the edges of the jagged truth she's just been trusted with, all she wants to do is assuage the rawness of whatever steals round her shadow and feels ever so slightly like something she'd forgotten. Not compassion. Not worry. The faintest whisper of concern.

"But you're here." Rose puzzles. "That seems..."

Luisa flashes a wicked grin. "Fucked up?"

"Reckless." Rose's own lips curl with something dangerous.

Luisa doesn't sever eye contact, doesn't waver, just glitters in the dim light of the bar.

"I can handle it."

 _Can you?_ Is the unspoken question she tacks onto the end with her smirk.

 

 **_..._ **  

 

The car ride over was bad. Not because of traffic, not this time, but because of how the air between them is threaded with something hot, something heavy. Every time their knees had touched it was fresh static until Luisa had seen fit to press herself into Rose's side with no intention of moving. Rose kept thinking she'd look down and see smoke rising from where they had begun to tangle.

This is worse. 

The proximity of the elevator that she's only now noticing seems far too small for such a big building. The agonisingly slow ride from the ground floor to the roof. She's watching the numbers tick slowly by in mocking red neon and each floor seems to take an hour to reach the next.

Luisa's incorrigible. Her hand keeps drifting back to loosely entwine their fingers before she pulls back, pauses, and reaches for her again. It's the most taunting, tantalising, barest brushes of skin; Rose can only bring herself to stand it for eight floors out of thirty before she clears her throat, and switches her clutch into her other hand as an excuse for something to hold.

As desperate as she is to keep her eyes firmly fixed on the numbers, she can't help but catch Luisa's knowing smirk in her periphery, and it's all she can do not to burst into flames.

"What floor are you on?" Luisa asks once they've surpassed storey twenty seven.

Rose stares straight ahead. "We're not going to my floor."

"Damn, thought there couldn't be any _more_ suspense."

It's something she'd earlier claimed to love, when she'd not so subtly asked if Rose wanted to get out of the bar and find somewhere more quiet and Rose had mentioned she knew somewhere.

She hopes that maybe, if she can control the setting, she can control what takes place in it, or at the very least regain some of her own restraint. That if she couldn't keep Luisa locked out of her world it's better to invite her in than stand by and watch her invade. Her apartment is too far in, it's never been somewhere she lives, only where she eats and plans and sleeps, but she still can't risk opening its doors to the intractable cracks of contumacy that have started cleaving through her core.

Instead she sets her sights skyward, up to the rooftop, into the firmament. Hopes she can gather herself back up and repair these chinks in her world and all its armour if they're closer to the heavens. Reinstate herself among the gods.

Finally the doors open, and Rose lets her breath escape out into the night.

Luisa walks out, whistles approvingly. "Wow. This view is fucking gorgeous."

Rose doesn't disagree, here she feels her most immortal. The city and the sky stretched out before her, beneath her. Looking down on all the little lights and feeling the earth quiver as she decides which part of it will be her next conquest.

She takes a few steps, feels the doors fall heavily shut behind her, and finally, they are alone.

Luisa turns back towards her, smiles in a way that, for the first time that night, is far less flirtatious and far more affectionate than anything that has preceded it.

"The view's not the only thing."

She turns back to it anyway, wanders over to the edge of the pool, kicking her shoes off on the way, and sits down, dips her feet into the blue; uninhibited by the spills and splashes that border the water and are now no doubt soaking into her dress.

Rose doesn't move, the compliment should empower her, make her feel adored, revered. Instead there's a delicate cramping in the flesh between her ribs and she doesn't know how to make it stop. She tries to tamp it down, repress it, ignore it if nothing else but she can't. She's better than this, better than love and pain and fear and all the feeblest points of humanity that make you weak, make you sick, make you suffer. She wouldn't suffer for anyone, certainly not for love.

Not that that's what this is, it can't be, not so soon and not to her. If anything it's more like life. A sudden breath of it breezing through atrophy and reviving her muscles. She shakes herself out and pretends she's free of the thought. Swallows hard, and follows Luisa.

Rose slips off her heels, sets them down neatly well away from the water, unlike Luisa's that are messily abandoned three feet apart and one foot from the pool. She swallows her pride, just about stomachs the thought of chlorine ruining her designer dress, and joins Luisa at the side of the pool, lets her legs dangle in the water.

Luisa leans over, turns the space between them into no more than an interstice and entwines their legs beneath the surface of the pool. Rose leans back on her palms, struggles to hold her own and not give in to the intangible pull between them. It doesn't make sense, she's always been the one in control, she has to be. Tonight was supposed to be easy, not complicated, only carnal. Feeding base tastes and instincts before she sloughs her skin and moves on to the next.

Instead something has ruptured within her, something she'd long since written off and written out has burst open and left her with a ragged edge, an open wound and proof that she can still break, still bleed. Proof that she's still attached to this fragile physicality. She's wielded nothing but her own power for so long it was so assured, so impervious, and yet she's stumbled across someone who at first it wasn't strong enough for, and now she's not sure she'd exert it on even if it was.

Rose can't see Luisa as anything other than human, beautifully flawed and blessedly whole, and it begs the question whether that makes her human too, and if it's really such a bad thing to be. If there's anything left making her feel omniscient it's that Luisa has no idea what she's done to her, what she's still doing, rousing the once lost remnants of her soul. It's the highest form of necromancy and she's unaware Rose was ever even less than alive.

Luisa stares out across the water, blissfully ignorant, and Rose prays, to what she's not sure, that she stays that way. Safe from the danger, and the divine, and the dead.

"Do you come up here a lot?" Luisa asks, gently trying to paint pieces of a picture of the life Rose will never lead.

"Less than I'd like." And there's that godforsaken honesty again. "I travel a lot. For business." It still isn't a lie, she's simply being economical with the truth before it costs her more than she can ever regain.

If Luisa is disheartened she doesn't let it show, her smile remains bold, lustful. "So how long are you in town?"

"The weekend."

Rose can't help but cast her eyes downward before the urge to return the look consumes her completely. Her tongue darts out between her teeth before she can contain the impulse to lick her lips, and she extrapolates further than she intended, in the hope that she will give away less than if she trusts herself with the nonverbal.

"I'm trying to close this deal but..."

But it's not real. It's a performance, a power play. One more man and his money. One more specimen she'll strip for parts. She stares off at nothing until she finds her way back to Luisa, spills yet more unbidden secrets.

"My heart's not in it."

Until tonight that wouldn't have been anything more than a fact, until a few hours ago it never was because she didn't believe she had one. Now it feels like a confession, foreign as it falls from a mouth she can't be sure is hers.

Luisa reaches for her hand again, and this time she makes no move to pull away. Rose looks at Luisa's fingers covering her own and wonders how bad it'll be if she stays, what it'll do to her, to the both of them. She looks up again and blue eyes bore into brown. Honeyed hazel, fallen leaves on the forest floor, and there is something quenching in how her own gaze melts and they are cool rain on warm earth, the bones of winter and the body of spring. Inspiring growth. Life.

"I really did not expect this." Nor the way the admission works itself out of her in something that grazes a laugh.

Amongst every splinter of truth Luisa has somehow pulled from her, it might be the most honest thing Rose has said all night. It tumbles out before it allows her to weigh the weight of those words, hold them on her tongue and ascribe value to each syllable and what they illustrate, it feels like spitting blood.

Luisa just smiles, and Rose fixates on the softness of her mouth, berry pink and bearing neat dentition and free of the rust and red that stains Rose's own lips.

"You never know when lightning's gonna strike." Luisa all but sighs.

Rose thinks back to the bar, to sovereignty and stratagems and, "Thirty four days sober." To a boldfaced lack of shame and bolt of bright light, trying to rein in revelations and running headlong into them anyway.

She runs to them now, leans in and inhales the whisper of air between them before crossing the last bridge as it crumbles behind her. Rose crushes herself against Luisa's petal soft lips and destroys any hope of return. She is the gunpowder, and Luisa's the spark.

Somewhere in the sky there are fireworks, but she barely hears them, barely registers the shrieking light show as they drown in the explosion of every one of her veins being brought back to life. They pale against the crackle of electricity that hurtles down every last neuron and Rose thinks Luisa is right, you never know when lightning is going to strike. But it hasn't just struck a nerve it's a thunderstorm of static, thousands upon thousands of volts shocking her whole body. Awakening pulse, causing her blood to circulate once more, making it rush.

It jolts and jars with the bitter reality that she is nothing more than flesh and bone. She has built her empire on the charred remains of puppet skeletons, made them dance just to set fire to the fuse of their strings. But she has died along the way. Inhaled too much smoke and deprived herself of living, denied herself of being.

It's nothing more than self-immolation. She's just a human pretending to be a god, believing if she sacrifices enough, rips out enough of her own flesh for offering, she'll become more than mortal. And now her kingdom is quaking and the walls have started to shake at the hands of another, one she cannot bring herself to burn.

Rose's world shatters beneath Luisa's lips, and she barely has time to breathe before she leans in again and begs for ruin.

Luisa takes her apart easily, she's no stranger to smashing everything that falls into her hands but this is different, Luisa fissures each accretion that sheaths Rose's skin, and Rose lets her order disintegrate in the hands of chaos.

Luisa is messy. Messy as she rakes her fingers through Rose's hair and encourages tangles, messy as she drags her teeth over Rose's lower lip, messy as she rips her own dress from her shoulders and comes back for Rose's that Luisa pulls up and over her head in a frenzy.

They pause for a second, gasp for the air their own lips seem intent to deny one another. Rose gravitates toward her again and hungers for something that'll never be sated, something that Luisa doesn't even let her taste as she slips from the side of the pool and into the water. Rose doesn't even think, follows her over the edge without protest.

Rose feels her rediscovered senses spreading out across the surface of the water as Luisa tangles their legs beneath their waves, reaches her arms around Rose's neck and lets them lie there like a flaming wreath.

Luisa pulls her further down with every kiss, drags her a little deeper as she licks the salt from Rose's skin and breathes the burning of life back into her. In her lungs. Her heart. It thaws the surface of her frozen lake and she gives herself over to Luisa's thrashing surf and takes pleasure in drowning, over and over again.

 

 **_..._ **  

 

It's late. Late enough that the sky is still swathed in black but the last few fireworks have taken flight and now the only things left to glitter in the sky are the stars. Rose watches as Luisa leans against the wall at the edge of the roof, hair wet and dripping, wrapped in only a robe and looking out over the city that now seems so much smaller next to her.

Somehow everything seems smaller next to her. The whole stretch of the horizon and everything that lines it is nothing by comparison. Not when she's singlehandedly knocked Rose from the heavens just for her to realise Luisa was really exhuming her from six feet below. Not when this was supposed to be without feeling, without meaning, and it has ended up meaning everything.

Rose wrings out her hair, rubs at her skin with a towel as if she can scrub clean the cracks that have started to tear through her. She just stays raw, turns red. Rose drops her gaze from Luisa's back to the trail of damp footprints that lead to where she stands, considers following the rapidly fading path and walking the brink with her, standing beside someone as they look down at the world together.

A piercing shiver racks her body, combs icy fingers through her bones at the thought of letting Luisa's light into her dark for anything longer than tonight. It's true Luisa's inspired a change that can't be reversed, Rose welcomed a hurricane within her walls and has no choice but to face the fallout. But Luisa has no reason to face it with her, and Rose has no right to ask her to.

The parts of her still shaking off the shadows and brushing off the dust are whispering that maybe she can lay these things to rest once more if she leaves now. Retreats back to the safety of her underworld and buries herself back amongst the bones and the bodies.

If only she hadn't finally found herself in the feeling of being alive.

But there's meters between them and the pool has stilled without their passion and in the darkness of her mind it's starting to resemble the Styx; she is no Charon, she will not take it upon herself to ferry this soul over to the other side. Not when Luisa's given her respect for the living, reverence even.

Rose slides back into her dress and it pulls at her damp skin, drags on the creases and the cracks and all the crevices Luisa had seen fit to tuck an eternity of kisses into.

"If I lived here I don't think I'd ever leave." Luisa sighs, her timing is unfortunate, painful.

Her voice perforates the hush that had settled over them, takes the chill from the air. Still Rose refuses to let it touch her, and with Luisa giving no sign of shifting her sight from the cityscape Rose steals herself to silence. Luisa doesn't turn, doesn't demand anything in return, as Rose has come to learn she never does.

Rose tiptoes – a way of moving through the world she never expected to reside in her repertoire – over to where she left her shoes. Picks them up and refrains from putting them back on so she can pad over to the elevator in relative quiet; summoning the spirit of Orpheus as she fights every screaming impulse to turn back to the woman behind her. She tosses a silent prayer to the sky as she presses the glowing button and someone seems to answer as the doors slide open in noiseless celerity.

And like Orpheus she cannot help but turn, as she slips into the elevator and pivots before aiming for her floor, but she's comforted that her Eurydice will disappear. Allows herself the look solely because there's no way by which their paths will cross again. Not unless the stars align themselves into a bittersweet contrivance that throws them into each other's arms again.

Finally Luisa turns too, part of Rose had hoped she wouldn't, another part was calling out to be looked at once last time, to be looked at and to be _seen_.

Their eyes connect, and Luisa's hold so much but more than anything she is wistful. Touched by gentle sadness for something she already knew she'd lose, something she's happy to let go of if it meant she got to hold it for a moment. Rose realises she's the kind of woman who will let happiness flow through her fingers just to touch it, realises her own hand is closed to even the possibility as her nails bite viciously into her palm.

The doors close with a crushing finality and a noise that seems to reverberate down to her core. The red numbers roll back so much faster than before, an ominous crimson countdown she's scared to reach the end of.

Rose descends. Back into her broken world, back into the shadows and the absence of light. She shivers as her wet hair soaks through to her skin, shakes as the cold of severing herself from another hits her for the very first time. Swallows back the acid taste of the truth that she is human.


End file.
